The following background description art may include insights, discoveries, understandings or disclosures, or associations together with disclosures not known to the relevant art prior to the present invention but provided by the present disclosure. Some such contributions disclosed herein may be specifically pointed out below, whereas other such contributions encompassed by the present disclosure the invention will be apparent from their context.
Drives are used to control the motion of machines, typically to achieve optimal performance and efficiency from the given machine or machines. In electrical drives, this control is commonly achieved by changing the magnitude and/or frequency or just the magnitude of electricity supplied to the load (typically, an electrical motor or motors powering a process) while a hydraulic or mechanical drive may be used to control a hydraulic or mechanical machinery, respectively. By changing the drive parameters, the physical parameters, for example, the speed and torque of a motor connected to the drive, may be manipulated. In exemplary operation, an electric alternating current (AC) drive receives AC current with a certain frequency and voltage level from an electrical power supply and converts said frequency to another frequency and possibly changes the voltage level of the current based on the load, that is, based on the properties of the AC electric motor connected to the drive and the properties of the process which the motor is powering. For example, if the motor is running a conveyor belt, the load may depend on the number of objects on the conveyor belt and the properties of said objects, for example, weight. Finally, the altered AC current is supplied to the motor leading to a more efficient process compared to feeding the motor directly from the electrical power supply.
Drives are commonly used in many industrial processes to control, for example, conveyor belts, fans or pumps. As different industrial processes may have very different functions and/or power demands, the drive parameters for optimal, energy-efficient operation may also differ considerably. Therefore, setting the drive parameters correctly during the commissioning of a drive is critical. This requires a lot of expertise and testing as the drive parameters may also depend on certain properties of the used drive, for example, motor type, further complicating the matter. Often the drive parameters are not initially set optimally, which leads to non-optimal process and performance. Drives may also be moved from one process to another during their operational lifetime requiring adjusting of the drive parameters. Moreover, the properties of the process may change during the running of the process requiring updating of the drive parameters, for example, the material flow through a pump may vary considerably during many industrial processes.